It's due to the influx of acessibility of modern recording. With a couple hundred bucks, i can build my own home studio, or even for a few bucks for a mic i can run audacity through my computer with a drum machine and create some good old myspace bedroom black metal demos. Actually, my mic is built in, and it's becoming more common for computers to build in a crappy webcam and microphone, so you could say it costs nothing to record anymore if one's so inclined.

With the discussion of EAL, and vinyl and such I came on the tail end of that. I started getting into black metal underground around late 2003, early 2004 right after the boom with these releases. However, consider this was 10 years ago...1999-2000. This means EAL and Northern Heritage and such were just beginning their run of limited vinyl, but if you read into the labels this was done because there was no demand for vinyl at the time so 100, 200, 300 copies would be all they could sell as that format.

Today's perspective you can press 1000 copies of an album and it will eventually sell out in less than a year, and 500-1000 copy runs sell out in weeks if the band is cult enough, or popular among hoarders and collectors. However the ideas of rarities in over emphasized. I notice some stuff gets reissued when selling out to avoid rarities, and some bands can't hold their value (one week sells for $15-20, next week it could be $40-50, then the week after $20-30). The real problem is the "100 copies then it's gone forever!" mentality rather than repress of 500 copies or 1000 copies after the 1st press with no or slight difference only. Many see record as collector item, not something to listen to.

I buy record to listen, so it's hard to buy all the rarities. I will try and slowly because I want to listen to them, and will find it worth it to have it if i like it enough. Only records I own with plastic sleeves on them is ones with fold/poster covers. Regular jackets and gatefold sit in the box without sleeves. I don't worry about the devaluing of my items because stuff that gets played often won't end up in a tradelist to begin with.

I got into vinyl due to necessity with many ep's, splits, and such being on vinyl only, so it's only way to hear these items, especially with my growing interest in the punk scene, the cd just become less needed, and now i'm so used to buying vinyl/tape that i only buy CD when there's no other choice, or it's an album where I don't want to spend high prices for sold out LP versions on ebay, but still wish to own.

10 years ago people already complained about the mass of releases. even 15 years ago...

yep pretty much , although with the flood of bargain basement scene leeches black and death has become very sheik??? so now it costs more for those of us that might have missed a rare record back then hundreds because these idiots want a particular pice just to claim they own an original Burzum, or Bathory press ,,,_________________Good People ::: schoolslave , ChapelOfDoom , abomination_virginborn , Doomchild , Detest Records , Roy Necroharmonic , Nosliw , Mz412